In a move sure to delight photographers everywhere, Instagram has begun testing support for multiple accounts within the app. The ability to post and interact using separate accounts without having to resort to third-party solutions or logging in and out of the app has been highly requested for years. If this comes to fruition, it will represent a paradigm change in workflow for many mobile photographers.
Many photographers keep separate Instagram accounts: one to showcase professional work and one as more of a personal scrapbook. Unfortunately, in order to manage these accounts, one has to download a third-party app such as Primary, and even then, they are limited to merely likely and browsing their feed. In order to actually post to multiple accounts, one must log in and out of the app, a process that is unnecessarily tedious at best. For many photographers, business owners, and social media managers, the ability to switch between accounts on the fly within the app would be a tremendous timesaver.
Some of those who downloaded version 7.12.0 of the app from APK Mirror or by being enrolled in the beta program found an "Add Account" option buried in the settings, which when enabled, allowed the addition of multiple accounts, thereby adding a dropdown selection menu on their profile page. While this feature is not yet prevalent in either the Android or iOS version of the app, its presence indicates that Instagram is indeed aware of the desire for its implementation and is working on a solution. Would you like to see this feature? Let us know in the comments!
[via Android Police]
I would prefer an option to have multiple streams that people can follow separately rather than having multiple accounts. A bit like the G+ collections where you can create one for each topic and people who aren't interested in everything of your work can just follow the one about portraits or street or whatever.
That would be an entire redesign and reimagination of how Instagram works. Which isn't inconceivable, but adding the ability for multiple accounts is for sure the best first step.
Also, I run my product and lifestyle company's IG account, which needs it's own account, and is not just a different feed of my own account. Nike needs its own account, not just a different stream of of one of the account manaer's personal account.
I think most companies use hootsuite to manage their social accounts so they've already the multiple account support for instagram since a long time.
But for the average person and photographer who works on his own a single brand/account solution might be the better option.
I do social media management for companies on the side and I DO NOT use hootsuite. It isn't completely free and the paid version doesn't have enough features to be worth paying for.
Yes, I do this and I do not use Hootsuite - that's not really what it does.
Hoot suite's Instagram solution is a mess, mostly because IG refuses to open the api
I could see that. My raw food fans probably don't like seeing gun photos.
I've been waiting for this for so long, I shoot...
Automotive - www.rossjukesphoto.com
Landscapes of my home town - www.rossjukesphoto.co.uk
And find it really frustrating that you can't have multiple accounts like Twitter/Facebook. I just hope this happens soon and isn't ruined by the spammers!
I manage several different business' social media... All completely unrelated... Being able to do this the way twitter does it will make my life so much easier.
Now if only they'd allow real scheduling.
This is pretty great news for so many people on social media. I just read an interesting article about what apps teens are using and as I see Twitter begin to fall in interest and Facebook pick up steam again for reasons mainly in FB Messenger they still love Instagram. The biggest take away from that article was kids love to have multiple accounts too and not just businesses. They like one for their closest friends and then one for their artsy photos and then one for crazy fun photos. Pretty intersting to see the social evolve around the main runners in the industry right now.